I have been given the task of deciding the next move in dealing with Edwards' "distro".

I appears to be so bug laden that it may require a major overhaul. The BrainAI alone seems to be half usable at best. I'll admit it looks impressive at first glance but if it doesn't work should it be the "official Distro" for POL? It appears that the bugs are pretty big and without serious community support to fix them, we should at least have a working Distro for newcomers to start with.

We do have the Distro-Alt available. It has the advantage of being an update to the working POL 0.95 Distro and not a set of new and untested scripts. The update was to add compatibility for realm support and other minor things to bring it into compliance with POL 0.99.

It will require some work to add in the new items and creatures to bring it to ToL expansion compliance but as I've seen the Edwards' scripts aren't ToL compliant either.

The coding style and "geography" (folder layout) is mostly from the earlier Distros before POL 0.96. It does work as it stands and is playable. It is missing Snooping and Stealing skills but those can be added. It needs to have the new ToL skills added but there are some packages for some of those that I plan to add. It does have "standard" NPCs and AI scripts, no BrainAI.

I have put off asking this poll question for fear of seeming to be self-serving because I was the one who posted the Distro-Alt to the repo but Nando and I have talked (chatted via Skype) at length and when he announced my position as Distro leader he emphasized to me that the time had arrived to make a decision.

So please vote. I have given you 4 options and you can change your vote if you need/want to. The POL poll (I've always wanted to say that) will run for 14 days.

Please note that no changes to the status of Edwards' scripts until I get approval from Nando.

A complete set of scripts (the “Distro”) that emphasize the basics of game play, but are designed to allow you to easily modify or expand their functionality

The Edwards scripts are not a "basic set". They can always be referenced by someone wanting to add 300 NPC types, extra races, class system or additional spell systems.

It might also be a good time to target the distro to a specific era. Most of the currently available script sets seem to aim for UOML client.

I am not sure if POL or UOFiddler read the full TOL map. I saw one of the run/serv..UO versions the other day and realised that they were using some point on the map that I could not see in Fiddler. I think the furthest Fiddler reads the map is 6144 x 4095 (?). There seemed to be "blackthorn dungeon" at 62xx x 25xx, so does POL maybe also have a limitation there?

I am not sure if POL or UOFiddler read the full TOL map. I saw one of the run/serv..UO versions the other day and realised that they were using some point on the map that I could not see in Fiddler. I think the furthest Fiddler reads the map is 6144 x 4095 (?). There seemed to be "blackthorn dungeon" at 62xx x 25xx, so does POL maybe also have a limitation there?

Have you looked in Fiddler's Settings --> Options? There is a checkbox "New Map Size". I think that enables the larger map view.

I like many of the things that are in the distro but also see a serious downside to it, although it is feature rich it most assuredly is too feature rich to be just a grab and go.

The expansion on damage types raising it to 12 as I recall, where bard songs have their own resist type for instance is something I'm certain most people wouldn't want.

This intermingles with that, removing the class system has proven to be more fraught with hassle than it should have been thanks to the class levels.

The dumbest names for npcs I've seen in a long while save for one other. (One of you knows what I mean)

Now, onto the checklist of bugs:
Brain AI - borked, beyond the mundane of sounds, when in combat with two mobs, if you're swinging at one, the other just stands there like an idiot, the wander stuff from previous threads not working quite right.

Housing system never seemed to work right which didn't bother me much but, you know it should.

Bard songs - the poison one hits the caster.

I've forgotten some of the other issues but these two are rather important ones.

Then onto the fact, that because it is full of custom stuff and the author, Edwards, is rarely around to answer questions and hasn't seemed to be interested to post on how to fix bugs that have been an ongoing issue and no one else knows what exactly is going on or rather how they work or intermingle with each other until like me you try to pull something out and find this over here doesn't like that. I understand things need to intermingle, ultimately the bigger issue of the two is how things work in game, how do you explain the system for let's use Enchantments to players on how to use them.

I think it was a valiant gesture on Edwards' part to offer up his server but after digging around in it a little, it just seems to be more and more of a piece of abandonware riddled with bugs that should have never been present on what was as I understand it, a live and active server.

Oh, and as a side note of just one other small relative non issue, the fact that the Distro has references visible in game to Fantasia Shard when it's supposed to be the POL Distro just seems wrong to me.

I believe that POL does need a fully functional distro, that is not only easy to get running but is also minimal bugs.

With that said I think that Zulu is a large part of POL (this may be biased as i've only ever been around Zulu servers). And lots of people seem to want to run Zulu servers. Original Zulu scripts are spaghetti which is likely why Edwards(and others) have sought to re-write them over the years. If Edwards was a successful Zulu clone then it would probably make a great Alt Distro.

Here are some thoughts i've had over the last few weeks whilst this discussion has been bubbling up:

A configuration file should be used for the server name and all references to that can be called from scripts etc just so that people can quickly rename their server and all references will be updated.

A html or php based configurator for the server would be good. If the distro could be packaged with a flag that triggered the core to pop up a webpage on first run if it hasn't been configured. That way people could set what version of UO(AOS,ML,TOR) they want to run, What ports they want, What server name they want etc.

We could work on a code structure that allowed for multiple distros to work off common scripts, e.g. have a zuluCombat and an osiCombat package and the php configurator would allow you to turn on or off multiple packages by selecting your play style.

Alternatively if we had an executable installer for the distro we could have the installer select which distro/script set they want and then have it pull down those scripts from the github.

These are just thoughts, obviously the above decision needs to be made first and then we can start discussions about how and what to offer from there.

Some good ideas there. When this poll ends I'll start a discussion thread for us to decide on some short term and long term goals for the Distro and maybe one for the same on the Core for whomever may become the Core leader

I do appreciate the input of ideas. You do understand I may "tap you on the shoulder" to help with your ideas so be prepared to assist in whatever way you can but for now I will try to refrain from too much input on the POL poll thread.

Distro-Alt is a 'easy to learn and understand' script base, and imo it is much better for POL newbies.
Edwards distro contains a huge amount of complex code, where even experienced scripter becomes a headaches trying to fix something.

My two cents: I "grew up" on the Alt-Distro structure when working on Neverlands so I am pretty partial to it. I think it's easier to understand, but that may be just because I already do...?

And yes, I agree that there should be some targeted era for POL distro, but there seems to be a lot that needs to be added in order to accomplish this. For example, all the new skills like ninja and things like that?

And yes, I agree that there should be some targeted era for POL distro, but there seems to be a lot that needs to be added in order to accomplish this. For example, all the new skills like ninja and things like that?

Agreed, I plucked out a spellweaving, chivalry and necromancy pkg from the arena pvp (the sys messages and most of the variable names are in Polish) and sent it Yukiko's way and it is on the to do list I believe, if anyone wants to help with that I'm sure he'd be more than happy to get some help there. I'm also looking to have these working too, so I will probably get to working on them at some point as well though currently I'm under the Edwards Distro and I plan on using cliloc references as I've become a huge fan of these, though tedious, I think they're the way to go.

The poll has been running for 9 days and so far it appears unanimous in favour of replacing Edwards' scripts with the Distro-Alt. The poll will continue til July 26th but I will make preparations for the switch The question has come-up about a name for the Edwards' set of scripts. If you want to contribute a suggestion please PM me with your idea. I don't want to clutter this thread with naming ideas. I'm too often guilty of going off-topic in threads myself.